The Writings of M D Nalapat

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Saturday, 3 November 2018

Trump’s aim is to reverse Xi’s drive to overtake the US in technological innovation.

“America First, and Donald J. Trump first
in America”, at least for the next six years. This is the evolving
Trump Doctrine in a single sentence. No other US President during the
post-1945 period has sought to so ignore the recommendations of the
Washington DC bureaucracy as the nation’s 45th President has, although
as yet the Beltway has prevented his plan of distancing Moscow from
Beijing, thereby leaving the world’s second most powerful economy
without the support of what remains a potential Great Power, albeit
severely diminished since the Brezhnev-Gorbachev-Yeltsin years. However,
he is trying to break free on North Korea in a manner not yet emulated
by National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo, both of whom remain anchored to the establishment view that
North Korea must render itself defenceless before any sanctions against
it can be relaxed. As the practical New York businessman who is now
Commander-in-Chief knows, such a policy would only snuff out any hopes
that the DPRK would desist from going any further in accumulating deadly
weapons, technologies and operations than is already the case. It is
illustrative of why US policy in the 21st century has substantially
destroyed the very countries it intervened to rescue (such as
Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Iraq) that the Washington Beltway sees it
as “extreme and illogical” that Kim Jong Un would not agree to surrender
his most potent defences against a US attack in the absence of a formal
end of the 1950-53 Korean war. The present occupant of the Blue House
in Seoul, Moon Jae-In, does not suffer from such delusions, and seems
increasingly in a mood to ensure that conditions get created that would
end in at the least a mutual non-aggression pact between Pyongyang and
Seoul. The thought of Koreans killing Koreans, as happened during the
blood-soaked conflict 68 years ago, has entered the Korean psyche with
such force that public opinion in South Korea would be thrown into
violent protest and turmoil against the elected authority, were Moon to
agree to join hands with Trump and Abe in a pre-emptive war on the DPRK.
In any such war, the North would be almost completely obliterated,
while the South would be damaged to an extent that would reduce it to
something close to the pitiable condition that Syria is in today, after a
“War of Liberation” was accelerated in 2012 against Bashar Assad by
NATO and the GCC. And while Japan would suffer significant damage, the
US is likely to escape relatively unscathed, barring perhaps Guam. It
will take some more time for North Korean scientists to fashion bombs
and projectiles sufficient to reach the US West Coast, and each time any
policymaker in Washington demands full disarmament without any
corresponding concession or even gesture on the US side, those North
Korean scientists and technicians must be working at an even more
feverish pace than usual. The North Korean regime has to feel confident
that Kim will not meet the fate of Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi,
and thus far both the words as well as the body language of the Pompeos
and the Boltons (not to mention the “Attack North Korea” crowd in the US
Congress) emanate no such assurance. It is only Trump who, on occasion,
talks in a manner that could get results, but the North Koreans are as
avid readers of the Washington Post
and as eager viewers of CNN as the writers and anchors in these media
outlets, hence, Kim Jong Un cannot be faulted for believing that Donald
Trump may soon get deposed, so that all the promises and progress made
through engagement with him would be lost.

In contrast to his policy towards both
North Korea as well as Russia, which are still “work in progress” as a
consequence of bureaucratic recalcitrance, President Trump seems to have
secured sufficient support within the Beltway to ensure that he
implement the first stage of his policy towards China, the aim of which
is to ensure (through lower growth and stunted technologies) that
Beijing remain well behind the US during the present century. In other
words, Trump’s aim is to reverse Xi’s drive to overtake the US in
technological innovation by 2035 and by 2049 make China the world’s
leader in the manufacture of hyper-tech items now dominated by the US.
The ten sectors specified by the Chinese leadership include aerospace,
robotics and Information Technology. As Hiroyuki Akita has pointed out,
Beijing is within reach of Xi’s tech targets. Recently, China—albeit
briefly—even had a faster supercomputer speed than the US, while the PRC
is second only to the US in the number of companies active in
Artificial Intelligence and in the use of supercomputers. As for
international patent applications, China is second only to the US and on
track to catch up with the US within three years. Although Trump has
talked about the mammoth trade deficit with China, it is not that figure
which is creating anxiety within America Firsters, but the fact that
tech breakthroughs such as the 5G technology rolled out by Huawei may be
30% cheaper than that of its nearest US competitor, giving the company a
global edge sought to be blunted by recourse to “national security”
prohibitions. The only credible way those seeking (naturally for reasons
of “national security”) to prevent a Huawei 5G rollout in India will
succeed is if they offer 5G alternatives that are cheaper and better.
That seems much too big an ask at present. Given the slow pace at which
India’s governance system operates, expecting the Modi-Abe Alternative
Intelligence and Advanced Technology Tokyo partnership to challenge
Chinese competitors seems a faraway goal. Given Trump’s “Can Do, Must
Do” mindset, there is unlikely to be an end to severe US-China frictions
until either the US succeeds in preventing Beijing from displacing
Washington as the “Tiger on the global mountain of economy and
technology”, or President Xi is able to beat back US attacks and succeed
in his objective of ensuring Chinese leadership in cutting edge
technologies within a fistful of years. Given that Trump is capable of
using any means at hand, including possibly attempting to inflict a
short but humiliating military defeat on China in air or sea in the
Korea, Taiwan or South China Sea theatre so as to humiliate Xi, expect
“interesting times” in the Sino-US dynamic. When America First meets
China First, only one will prevail.

By M D NALAPAT

To many, a US-China conflict may seem to belong to the domain of
fiction or Hollywood movies. But such optimism may be an illusion.

The mood in the capital city of Japan is sombre, and while the
majority of his people cling to the hope that military conflict
involving Japan is impossible or at least avoidable in the modern age,
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe knows otherwise. The risk of conflict between
US and Chinese forces is rising, and Abe is, therefore, working to
ensure that the post-1945 legal limits on the Japanese military get
removed, so that a robust defence or attack may speedily get carried out
by his forces when and where needed. The “Self-Defence Forces” of Japan
are a formidable force, especially the Navy, and Abe is fast-tracking
operational congruence with India, so that the ease of joint operations
becomes as smooth as that between the United States and Japan. Prime
Minister Narendra Modi was handed over a $75 billion currency swap
agreement in Tokyo this week, so that he would be in better political
shape to ensure closer working relations with Japan in a context where
relations between Washington and Beijing are entering storm levels. The
South China Sea; the Taiwan Straits; and the Korean peninsula are just
three of the theatres in which an accidental or impulsive move by local
military commanders on either side could trigger an exchange of fire
between ships and between aircraft. As for the Himalayan frontier,
Washington is impatiently waiting for the bureaucracy in India to go
ahead with the signing of BECA (a geospatial data agreement) so that the
legal decks get cleared for full scope cooperation between Washington
and Delhi in the exchange of input on the activities of countries that
both regard with suspicion. Subsequently, the question will be taken up
of ensuring that the Indian Army be given the equipment needed to take
on any comer in combat. The US is moving towards shifting some of its
defence production facilities to India, but this is running up against
opposition within the Lutyens Zone that is fanned by weapons dealers
from countries such as France and Russia, who would lose out were India
to source a high and rising proportion of its defence import needs from
the US, a development that would make geopolitical sense. Another US
effort could be to expand the “Five Eyes” signals intelligence alliance
into the Six Eyes, so that India gets added to the US, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Among the locations which are
suitable for the setting up of tracking facilities capable of covering
the Indian Ocean are some of the islands in the Andaman chain, while
facilities on the west coast of India could keep a watch on the Arabian
Sea.

INDIA MUST CHOOSE

In this militarily binary world, India needs to choose between the US
and China as its preferred security partner. Beijing appears to have
foreclosed the matter by continuing to expand its hugely expensive “all
weather” relationship with the Pakistan military, while knowing from the
start that the only two enemy targets of that force are Afghanistan and
India. That Pakistan was for long a treaty ally of the US was of no
concern to China even during the 1960s, well before the 1972 Nixon-Mao
rapprochement between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the US.
This was because Beijing was confident (through understandings reached
in secret with GHQ Rawalpindi) that at no time—and despite Pakistan’s
frequent promises to the US to “fight communism”—would the Pakistan
military go on attack mode against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
However, Pakistan did provide facilities for US snoop mechanisms
designed to look into China, on the condition that it would
simultaneously be given data collaterally collected on India by such
methods. Also, Pakistan army officers visiting the PRC would, on
occasion, debrief their US counterparts on what they saw and heard in
China, which at the time was a country judged as hostile to US
interests. Thus, through being an “eye on China”, GHQ Rawalpindi was
given a free pass by the CIA and the Pentagon in its increasing
closeness with the Central Military Commission (CMC) in Beijing.
Simultaneously, the Pakistan military routinely briefed the PLA on what
they saw in the US, and in particular on training methods and equipment
used by the world’s most powerful military in its exercises. By playing
both sides for decades, GHQ Rawalpindi derived a double benefit (from
both Washington and Beijing), a free ride that ended with the onset
since the Trump Presidency of what is certain to be a period of
prolonged hostility between the US and China.

Although both US commanders as well as their Chinese counterparts
have publicly warned the forces under their command that the chance for
war is no longer negligible, as yet a US-China conflict seems to many to
remain confined to works of fiction or Hollywood movies. Such optimism
may be an illusion. It needs to be remembered that during the five years
prior to the 1914-1919 World War, at the close of which Germany was
emasculated and Russia became Bolshevik, there were only stray (and
almost invariably ignored) indications of the coming conflict. German,
Russian and British elites met and partied together, while the Royals of
all three countries were frequently in touch, being friends and
relatives of each other. It was a stray event, the assassination by a
Serbian group of an Archduke of the Hapsburg monarchy that tipped the
balance towards war. Well before that, tensions that were being
neglected by policymakers continued, in consequence, to fester. Finally,
the perception that there was need for a “swift and decisive” war took
hold, resulting in a conflict lasting five years, with global
consequences, including for Asia. In many ways, the existing situation
in Asia resembles that which was present in Europe during the years
immediately preceding 1914. These days, both US President Donald J.
Trump and President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
meet several times a year, and both Commanders-in-Chief of the two
biggest militaries in the world take care to be as pleasant to the other
as Tsar Nicholas was to Kaiser Wilhelm during their pre-1914 meetings.
Around them, however, swirl disagreements and dissonance, based on the
reality that the US administration (especially under Trump) will not
accept falling behind China in matters of GDP and technological prowess,
a situation that seems inevitable given the present trends. Actions get
taken by government agencies that are logical only in the context of
the other country being factored in as an enemy and not simply a rival.
Given that the hold of the Chinese Communist Party over the
administration and the people of the world’s other superpower is at the
heart of China’s success, the Trump administration is making no secret
of its efforts at weakening that hold to ensure through a multiplicity
of means that the PRC’s growth rate falls to below 5% and counting. High
growth rates over three decades have ensured social stability in China,
and a decline as steep as what is planned could result in turmoil. That
is, unless the people of that country believe that the hardships they
may face are because of the hostile actions of countries jealous of
China’s rise, specifically the US. And that armed conflict may be the
only way forward in a situation where other methods seem devoid of
results. Paradoxically, the weaker the Chinese economy and the more at
risk the hold of the Xi-dominated “leadership core” of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) over the country, the higher the risks of military
conflict. Such a situation would be certain to dissipate emotions
directed by the Chinese people towards the CCP as a consequence of
disappointments and frustrations, and would make them endure hard times
with patience and fortitude. As Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee discovered
in 1999, even a war caused by one’s own errors of judgement (in this
case, the decision of National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra, together
with Army commanders to abandon winter quarters along the Line of
Control in the Kargil sector till weather conditions improved, thereby
giving an opportunity for Pakistan’s irregulars to occupy the abandoned
shelters) leads to a boost in popularity. The Kargil conflict ensured
the return of Vajpayee in the Lok Sabha polls, for a fresh five-year
term.

CORE OBJECTIVES

It needs to be stressed what the core objectives of India should be.
An obvious desideratum would be that no South Asian country act in a
manner that degrades the core interests of India. Another would be to
ensure that no single power become empowered enough to dominate the
Eurasian landmass, for such a power would then be a short step away from
world domination. In the decade ending 1945, Japan sought to dominate
East, South and South-East Asia and was defeated. The US sought to
become the dominant power in Eurasia during the 1960s the way the
British Empire had been in the past, but confronted obstacles that it
lacked the methods and resources to overcome. Washington is now a much
diminished power, and needs new allies in order to ensure not dominance
but primacy, especially in the most consequential theatre of the 21st
century, the Indo-Pacific. Within the Indian Ocean segment of this body
of seawater, India is an indispensable partner for the US, hence the
outreach to Delhi. However, this country’s 19th century colonial-minded
bureaucracy has a very expansive view of itself coupled with contempt
for the people of India, and hence routinely misses not just
opportunities, but opportunities for opportunities. Surprisingly for
those who believed he would act on the “Minimum Government” pledge made
during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi
is as respectful of the bureaucracy as his idol Sardar Patel was, with
the consequence that the many speed brakes placed by well-placed babus
along the path to fulfilment of the Prime Minister’s plans have ensured
that several have moved ahead at much slower speed than anticipated by
those who voted for Modi in 2014. A full scope defence and strategic
relationship with the US is essential for both that country and India,
if they are jointly to ensure primacy over the Indian Ocean and
subsequently, retain primacy in the Pacific Ocean as well, a task in
which Japan would be key, while a friendly Taiwan would be an
incalculable asset. In such a process, it is clear that countries such
as the Seychelles, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia
and Myanmar should ensure that the core interests of the US-India
alliance not get adversely affected through their actions. Of course,
such moves will meet with opposition from China, which is focused on
keeping the US out of the oceans to the maximum extent it can, so that a
vacuum gets created that can get filled by the PRC and its powerful
military. While continuing to make purchases of petro-products from Iran
makes sense for India, the purchase of S-400s from Russia in place of
seeking a combination of THAAD and Patriot Pac 3 missiles from the US
does not. It is not a question of narrow technicalities, but of broad
strategy, as the US-India defence relationship will approach its
potential only when India sources most of its defence imports from that
country, while at the same time ensuring that hotheads in the US
Congress not succeed in imposing conditions that would wreck the
US-India military relationship and thereby open the door to Chinese
primacy in the Indian Ocean Region. Certainly, any Senator or
Representative seeking sanctions on India will become the toast of the
powerful PRC lobby in Washington. Apart from the seas, the US and India
need to partner against the more violent manifestations of Wahhabism,
wherever these be found, although the latter must take care to ensure
that it does not get embroiled in Team Trump’s repeat of Ariel Sharon’s
1982 Lebanon blunder. By inserting the Israeli Defence Forces against
the Shias on behalf of a Maronite Christian armed group, Sharon made
Israel the only country in the world which Shia terror groups routinely
target. Given its grievous errors while dealing with the Shia situation
in several locations, the US is likely to be the second. India must not
go down that path, and Modi should make it clear to Trump that good
relations with Tehran will remain a priority for Delhi even while
mil-mil ties with the US get ever closer.

Primacy and freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific; joint
operations against Wahhabi terror groups and to safeguard the stability
of the GCC; prevention of any single country gaining dominance over the
Eurasian landmass; the promotion of the values of tolerance and
inclusion that are the foundation of democracy. Such are among the
objectives of an India-US defence and security alliance, and it is hoped
that progress in this direction will be much faster in the coming years
than it has been since the previous decade. This will take place in a
context where the US will ignore what it sees as China’s efforts to have
a veto over policy over matters such as Taiwan. It may even be that in
2019 Vice-President Mike Pence may visit India, perhaps early in the new
year, and may even make a brief refuelling stopover in Kaohsiung in the
Republic of China (Taiwan) en route back to Washington. President Tsai
Ing-wen of RoC (Taiwan) may be permitted by Prime Minister Abe to make a
refuelling stopover and thereafter another in a US city while on her
next visit to the Vatican. The Hudson Institute speech by Vice-President
Pence (which has been compared to the Fulton speech of Winston
Churchill about the Soviet Iron Curtain across Europe) indicates that
Team Trump is determined to use the tools at its command to reverse what
seemed before his 8 November 2016 victory to be an inexorable climb to
the top by the PRC. Armed conflict often begins by accident and
thereafter may take on a momentum difficult to restrain. The good news
is that even a brief military encounter between the US and China is
likely to push southwards not just stock but commodity markets, thereby
once again sharply lowering the price of oil. The bad news is that the
all-powerful bureaucracy in India seems clueless as to how to navigate
the country’s way through increasingly choppy times, and seems destined
to repeat mistakes of the past that we in the present are still
suffering the consequences of.

Saturday, 27 October 2018

Defence should
not be left to generalist administrators or to purely military users who
may not factor in India’s overall geopolitical needs and
vulnerabilities.

Not surprisingly
for an election season, there continues to be a rising crescendo of
comments and counter-comments about the agreement entered into with
Avions Dassault to get 36 Rafale fighter aircraft. Some explain the
difference in price as being the consequence of the 36 aircraft needing
to be configured to carry a nuclear payload on deep-strike missions in
enemy states. Technical experts could testify as to how much more it
would cost per aircraft to configure it to carry a nuclear rather than a
conventional payload in terms of the weapons loaded, and as there are
several such individuals in India, it is time that they revealed their
financial and technical calculations, so as to give greater clarity to
the debate. The per aircraft cost for 36 seems much more than for 126.
Can the argument be made that this was because the configuration needed
to carry on board non-conventional weapons required a much more
expensive refit than what is needed for aircraft carrying only
conventional weapon payloads ? We do not know. The unit costs being
substantially more for the specially-configured 36 aircraft than for the
126 may be the consequence of the French supplier needing additional
funds in order to finance an upgrade of the existing M 88 engine of the
Rafale. This is relatively underpowered when compared to other fourth
generation fighter aircraft. Also, the present model of the Rafale does
not have stealth capacities. Does the pricey variant supplied to India
include this additional feature? The reality is that any boosting of the
capability of the Rafale engine is an expensive process, and Dassault
has been in a parlous financial situation. It needs to be remembered
that in modern warfare, any air rather than missile attack by the IAF on
a major military power would run the risk of being exposed to the air
defence network of that country. Should the target country have systems
such as the Russian S-400 that India is also purchasing, the risk to
attacking Rafale fighter aircraft would be substantial. Even cruise
missiles can get intercepted by the Russian system. The S-400 is a
superb anti-aircraft system, especially if the country that is the
target of an IAF attack has been given a system that features the latest
Russian missiles. It is not clear that India too will get the latest
Russian missiles for its S-400s or will acquire only older models for
the air defence systems that are being purchased for an initial cost of
$5 billion. There was a time when Moscow and Delhi were as close as
Beijing has long been to Islamabad, but that era has long passed, which
is why the continued heavy reliance on Russia for critical defence needs
requires a relook.

The problem facing the defence
procurement system in India is that the users (i.e. the wings of the
military) seem not to be given financial parameters and limits while
designing their specifications for weapons systems. As a consequence,
they may configure specifications in such a manner that only the most
expensive models would be eligible, as took place in the MMRCA process.
This would be analogous to a motorist being asked to choose the vehicle
he wants, irrespective of cost. He would naturally choose a Ferrari or a
Maserati, rather than a Volvo or a Toyota. The MMRCA program is
designed to replace the MiG 21s, of which over 400 have been in service
for the IAF. In order to have both an effective defence as well as
credible attack capabilities, at least around 200 more aircraft are
needed to be acquired in the near future. A mere 36, no matter how
magnificent each fighter aircraft may be, is not sufficient. In such a
context, the offer by the US to transfer the entire F-16 assembly line
to India should be seriously considered. The F-16 variant being offered
to India is the latest, and contains weapons systems and avionics far
superior to the aircraft supplied to Pakistan. Locating assembly lines
in India would ensure that the IAF get the 200 additional fighter
aircraft it needs to be a potent strike force, while additional aircraft
could be sold to other countries so that such sales subsidise part of
the costs of making and equipping the F-16s destined for the IAF.
Without the offer to relocate production lines to India, the offer of
F-16s was rejected in the past, and correctly so. However, entering into
the manufacture of the airframes for such aircraft would open the way
for future manufacture (jointly with the US) within India of more
advanced models, thereby adding to both local jobs as well as skills. It
may also be possible to persuade corporations such as Northrop Grumman,
Raytheon and BAE to set up facilities in India to manufacture radar,
electronics and weaponry for the F-16s that are locally manufactured.
The airframe accounts for only around a third of the total cost of
production of a frontline fighter aircraft, and the rest comprises other
items, most of which can be made in India. Our country and the US need
to enter into a much closer defence and security relationship, which is
why it would make sense in geopolitical terms to acquire the THAAD
anti-missile system on the same terms as offered to South Korea, as well
as Patriot PAC 3 anti-aircraft systems. Hyper-reliance on a Russia that
is today closest to a China that is still much too cosy with Pakistan
seems a risk.

India’s defence is way too important to
be left to generalist administrators or to purely military users who may
not factor in the overall geopolitical needs and vulnerabilities of the
country. Just as China makes a necessary partner for India in commerce
and economics, so does the US in defence and security. The IAF needs a
minimum of 200 frontline aircraft to ensure sufficient attack and
defence capabilities. The transfer of F-16 production to India, followed
by the transfer of part or whole of production facilities for more
advanced fighter aircraft and subsequently their equipment, makes more
sense than looking at every critical defence need and corresponding
purchase in isolation.

Friday, 26 October 2018

UNESCO Peace Chair and prominent Indian academician & columnist,
Prof M D Nalapat, in his address to the students at the Round Square
Youth Parliament, spoke on the role of media as an organ that cleanses
and purifies the government system. He spoke about minimum government
and maximum governance for growth and development and how today’s youth
and technology are the key factors towards a brighter future
Currently Editorial Director of The Sunday Guardian and Itv network
(India),[1] Vice-Chair of Manipal University's Advanced Research Group,
and Director of the Department of Geopolitics, Manipal University. He
has been the Coordinating Editor of the Times of India and editor of the
Mathrubhumi. He is the son of renowned author and poet Kamala Das.
The inaugural Inventure Academy Round Square Youth Parliament - Our
World, Our Voice was launched with Prof M V Rajeev Gowda and Dr Sumer
Singh as Guests of Honor at the opening ceremony. This five day event
from 15 to 19 August 2018 was held at Inventure’s campus on
Whitefield-Sarjapur Road, Bangalore.
The conference was conceptualised by Inventure Academy to equip children
with the Right to Participate (guaranteed by Article 12 of the UNCRC)
in the world that they are inheriting and to enable them to be positive
change makers. This was achieved by exposing our youth to different
perspectives, dialogues between nations and the process of
decision-making through a blended platform of the Model United Nations
(MUN) and Model Parliament (MP). The conference exposed students to the
process of how laws are created and implemented through the interplay
between various stakeholders, including international organisations such
as the United Nations, National Parliament, Media and Civil Society.
This helps to demonstrate how citizens (including children) can have an
impact and be a part of the solution.
The focus of this Parliament was our children contributing to the
achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4
by 2030 - “Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and
lifelong learning for all”. The specific sub areas of focus included the
quality of education and funding, child and cyber safety, and the
impact of conflict on the healthy development of youth.

CHIEF Minister Narendra D Modi of Gujarat made several promises to
the electorate, of which two are haunting and being remembered each day
by voters. The first was that Rs 15 lakhs would be deposited in the bank
accounts of every citizen of India after Modi (once made Prime
Minister) would get back an estimated $ 1.2 trillion of illicit cash
deposited by citizens of India in banking havens. The other was a
related vow that he would ensure that corruption was eliminated in the
functioning of government. Although Modi had more than a year to prepare
for what he would do in the event he became PM, the team of officials
that he chose was almost the same as that which had clustered around
Prime Ministers Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh. Several of them were
themselves regarded as being less than honest, while overall, the record
of both Vajpayee as well as Manmohan Singh in fighting corruption was
disappointing, although it must be said that in the case of the latter,
at least three Union Cabinet Ministers were forced to quit when they
came under scanner with allegations of corruption, while a Cabinet
minister (Andimuthu Raja) went to jail during that period.
Thus far, Prime Minister Modi has had no success in sending even a
single senior minister of the period of complete Sonia Gandhi rule
(2004-2014) to prison. Indeed, several of those who had been facing
charges under Manmohan Singh have had the relief of these charges being
dismissed by either the courts or the investigating agencies. Every few
days, reports get carried in the media about investigations” and raids
by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Enforcement Directorate
(ED) and the Central Bureau of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on miscellaneous
individuals, but little appears to have been done in the way of follow
up. The primary “corruption fighter” of the Government of India is the
Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC). During this official’s tenure in
the Income-tax department, there was raid after raid on High Net Worth
individuals, creating much gossip about how those raided dealt with
situation in private.
CVC Chaudhry is clearly an individual who works night and day, for he
took the extraordinary step of forcing the Director of the premier
anti-corruption investigating agency (CBI ) to go on leave, replacing
him with Nageshwar Rao, a relatively junior officer with a reputation
that is not entirely saintly. The change took place at 1am on Wednesday.
The new boss took charge after instructions were reported in the media
to have been given by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, whose remit
does not usually cover the CBI. The involvement of Doval made it
possible for opposition leaders to place the blame for the early morning
shakeout at the doorsteps of Prime Minister Modi, as Doval is the
official closest to the PM just as Arun Jaitley is the minister closest
to Modi. However, it is likely that it was not the PM but the CVC who
asked for his assistance in enforcing an unprecedented decision with
grave implications for the anti-corruption battle in the country.
In these days of social media, it is child’s play for frustrated
officials to leak information through the internet, and now that he has
been appointed Director of the CBI, every hour titbits are billowing out
about Rao. The CVC earlier worked in close proximity with two Sonia-era
Finance Ministers ( P Chidambaram and P Mukherjee), but it would be
unfair to suggest that the decision he took to send the now ex-CBI
Director on forced leave was motivated by anything other than what he
saw as an administrative necessity. However, the move has had the
unintended consequence of diluting the image of the Modi government in
the matter of probity, and has given opposition parties an effective
whip with which to flog even the Prime Minister relentlessly. The CBI
Director had anyway only a few more days left in his tenure. In a
earlier case of another CBI chief,Ranjit Sinha, the Modi government
allowed him to finish his term of office rather than cut it short soon
after the new PM was sworn in on May 26, 2014. Judging by the alacrity
with which incoming CBI Director Rao removed each of the officers
investigating Rakesh Asthana, the deputy chief of the CBI, who has been
accused by ex-Director Alok Verma of corruption, it is clear that the
new boss is no fan of his predecessor. Interestingly, although Asthana
also has been sent on leave, none of the team of officers around him has
been affected by the change in Director. A few days ago, it was being
mentioned within CBI headquarters that Asthana would soon be in prison.
Instead, it would seem that the CVC has ensured the premature ( by a few
days) exit of his nemesis,Alok Verma as also the early morning transfer
of key officers working on the corruption case against Asthana. The
lead investigator has been sent as far away as Port Blair in the Andaman
islands, the furthest point barring the waters of the Indian Ocean
where the unfortunate officer could have been moved.
Unlike others who accept decisions taken at the top stoically, ex-CBI
Director Alok Verma has filed a complaint before the Supreme Court of
India asking for the orders of forced leave be rescinded as illegal. The
Supreme Court is now headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who has a
reputation for both integrity as well as independence. Verma has,in true
bureaucratic tradition, kept away from the public much of the details
of hid complaint against the Government of India. The opposition has
even brought in defense and other deals to claim that Verma was hastily
moved out of his cabin to stop him from investigating them. Prime
Minister Modi will need to convince the people of India that he has
delivered on his promise of clean government and the creation of jobs on
a scale sufficient to ensure that young people find work. The
allegations against the CVC may be motivated and Chowdhary may be a
paragon of virtue, as also the other dramatis personae in the drama
being played out on television screens about the heart of the
anti-corruption machinery of the Modi government.
But his 1am decision has had the effect of casting a shadow over the
Government of India that is unlikely to dissipate in a hurry. Had he
consulted Prime Minister Modi before taking the decision he did, perhaps
the present ruckus may have been avoided. The Prime Minister is known
to be cautious, but he needs to warn the officers closest to him not to
be present at controversial venues such as the never before witnessed
sending on leave of the CBI Director and the immediate transfer of the
entire team of officers investigating Asthana. Why the new CBI Director
took such a step is a mystery. An immediate explanation is needed, as
opposition politicians have several times made the charge that the
former deputy chief of the CBI is a favourite of the PM. Admirers of
Narendra Modi are clear that while the PM may be polite to officials, he
has no favourites.

Saturday, 20 October 2018

Handover of Hindu shrines will ensure that fringe moves get treated with derision.

Contrary to the
views expressed by opposition parties, the Narendra Modi government is
the effect, and not the cause, of changes in societal attitudes that
need to be addressed. What is taking place at Sabarimala in Kerala is
just a mild foretaste of what can happen across the country, were past
(and still largely present) societal policies to be continued. Several
times when the UPA was in office, this columnist warned friends in the
Congress Party about the risks of backfire of their policy of treating
what in India is quaintly known as the “majority community” the way
minorities get treated in some countries. For decades, the way in which
successive governments discriminated against large sections of the Hindu
community in their policies remained unchanged. It was the overreach of
this policy by the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA that caused the blowback which
resulted in the installation as Prime Minister of Narendra Modi, who
refused to wax apologetic about Hindus being the majority community.
Since taking office, however, Modi has moved with extreme caution on the
necessity of ensuring that the scales of administration be level as
between members of one community or the other, refusing to take steps to
equalise sacrifice in the Right to Education Act or to free Hindu
temples from state control. Indeed, even the recent decision of the
Kerala government to remove the proviso that those administering (Hindu)
temples should be Hindu, was met with silence from the Union Ministry
of Home Affairs. Whether it be in choosing those in the BJP who had (and
have) cosy relationships with the Lutyens Zone, or in selecting for
important assignments those officials who were the favourites of Sonia
Gandhi and her key ministers (such as Sushil Shinde and P. Chidambaram),
the Narendra Modi government has followed a hyper-cautious policy
towards the past that has done little to lower the sense of insecurity
and injustice prevalent in the Hindu psyche as a consequence of decades
of “Nehruvian secularism”. This, by definition, posits that only Hindus
are “communal” and every other community “secular”, no matter how
extreme their views. An abortive UPA-era legislation sought to anchor
this tenet even more firmly than before, explicitly implying that only
Hindus would be found guilty in communal incidents.

It is essential for double digit growth
that the social stability necessary for rapid growth (the other
requirement being sound policy) be nurtured. This should not be expected
from government, as the colonial baggage carried by the administrative
apparatus (and its compliant political overseers) makes the structure
both unwilling as well as unable to remedy the festering fault line that
has been created as a consequence of discriminatory policies over the
centuries, added on to, rather than reduced, by the dawn of Independence
in 1947. Fortunately, the innate moderation of the Indian spirit is
sufficient to ensure that steps get taken within civil society itself to
heal rifts in perception and to ensure that a sense of shared destiny
permeates the 1.27 billion people of the Republic. After all, both the
RSS as well as the Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind were opposed to the 1947
partition of India that was agreed upon between M.A. Jinnah together
with Nehru and Patel. As for Gandhiji, he must have been heartbroken,
for it had been his life’s mission to bring together Hindus and Muslims
in a way that would make partition impossible, a goal which impelled him
even to support in 1919 the Wahhabi project of the Ali brothers to
bring back to life the Turkish caliphate, a decision that had the
opposite effect of promoting religious extremism and separatist
impulses. Whether it be his decision to be neutral during World War II
(thereby ceding public opinion in the UK to Jinnah, who backed the
Allies against the Axis), or to make the Congress ministries in the
provinces quit and thereby boost the power of both the Viceroy as well
as the Muslim League, there were several decisions taken by Mahatma
Gandhi that will need to await fuller examination in an era when even
mildly critical comments on the Mahatma are not seen as immoral or
indeed illegal.

98% of Hindus and Muslims are moderate,
and to ensure that this percentage does not dip in future, a gesture of
divine benevolence on the part of the Muslim community needs to be taken
to ensure that the Ram Janmabhumi, the Krishna Janmabhumi and the
ancient Kashi Viswanath temple in Varanasi be restored to the condition
they were in before the Mughals. The three sites are to the Hindus what
Mecca, Medina and Al Aqsa mean to Muslims, or Bethlehem to the
Christians (and the Vatican to the Catholics among them). Except to
Wahhabi and Khomeinist zealots, this should be obvious. There may be
intemperate minds within the Hindu community who say that not just this
all-important trio, but some other places of worship as well should be
similarly restored. The atmosphere of love and trust that will get
created between Hindus and Muslims after the handover of these three
shrines will ensure that such fringe moves get treated with derision.
Any attempt by elements of the Hindu fringe to take over any other place
of worship (once the three mentioned above have been restored) should
be met and thwarted with armed force by the state. It is not for nothing
that the ISI has for long ensured that more than a few Hindus form part
of its stable of agents. Indeed, those Hindus who kill in the name of
cow protection play a role welcomed by the ISI, which is to commit acts
that portray India as a country similar to a Pakistan that has been
relentlessly Wahhabised since the 1970s. The Congress and the Left need
to stop efforts at preventing a resolution even of the Ram Mandir issue.
There are those who claim that the Rahul Gandhi Congress is simply the
Sonia Gandhi Congress in a tracksuit. This is being unfair to the new
Congress president, although the anti-Hindu remarks of some of its
(Sonia-era but continued into the new period) senior leaders do seem to
indicate that nothing has changed. Such a perception would be to the
benefit of the BJP, a party that has a less than stellar record in
economic and social policy during its nearly five years of rule. In
India’s Muslim community rests the power to carry out an act of supreme
beneficence that would be entirely in keeping with the words repeated
multiple times in the Holy Quran, words that stress the divine qualities
of mercy, compassion and beneficence.

Friday, 19 October 2018

ON more than one occasion, this columnist has visited US Senators as
well as Members of the House of Representatives in the US Congress. That
country ensures secretarial assistance to its legislators, not to
mention impressive offices within the stately buildings housing them.
However, stone and mortar cannot substitute for brain matter, and
interactions with several lawmakers are an exercise in futility, unless
their staff have already been apprised of the views being expressed by
the visitor to the US Congressman or Senator. Almost all the time, the
views of these worthies are exactly what members of their staff have
briefed them on, and to change the mind of a legislator away from the
advice he or she has been given by key staff is as difficult as a block
of ice surviving in hellfire.
There is a gargantuan network within Washington DC (as in other capitals
of NATO’s three Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, such as
London or Paris) that has for more than three decades been lavishly
looked after by what may be termed the Wahabbi International. These
include think-tank and university staff who interact frequently with
aides of US legislators, besides serving and retired officials. This
powerful network has been looking for an opportunity to seek to create
diplomatic pressure on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to replace Crown
Prince Mohammad bin Salman with another royal who does not share the
young royal’s determination to wean his country away from Wahabbism into
the modern era. Women being allowed to drive or movies being screened
may seem inconsequential to many across the world, but in Saudi
Arabia,they are a giant leap forward into modernity. Given the age and
less than perfect health of King Salman, it is an existential matter for
the Wahabbi International to get Crown Prince Salman replaced with
another member of the Al Saud family, who is almost certain to roll back
the de-Wahabbization campaign of the Crown Prince. It is this
determination to effect regime change in Saudi Arabia that is behind the
frenzied campaign in media across the world to persuade King Salman to
replace the Crown Prince with another member of the ruling family.
The lack of familiarity of US legislators with anything not connected
with their political futures has been helpful to the Wahabbi
International in its “Oust the Crown Prince” drive. Rand Paul, a US
Senator, is an example. He has tweeted about how Saudi Arabia has been
(in his view) promoting radicalism for years, and hence has made itself
undeserving of remaining a US ally. Rand Paul has apparently got staff
who do not know the difference between the Middle East and the Midwest
of the United States. Else they would have pointed out to him that it is
precisely to roll back such support to radicals that the
de-Wahabbization drive has been launched by Crown Prince Mohammad, and
that his exit would result in the collapse of such efforts. Yet another
instance of jumping to conclusions based on unproven premises is shown
by Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican who claims that he is as close
to President Trump as the 45th US President’s own family. In the matter
of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as Associate Justice of the
Supreme Court, Senator Graham waxed loudly and often about how his
Democratic Party colleagues were jumping to conclusions about the
accuracy of the allegations levelled against him by Christine Blasey
Ford. But he seems unaware that he is himself jumping to conclusions
about the complicity of the Crown Prince in the disappearance of Jamal
Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist. Clearly, his reliance on the
principle that a person is innocent unless proven guilty is shaky at
best. It is not obvious that Senator Graham is the Administrator of
Saudi Arabia, the way Paul Bremer was once Administrator of Iraq, a
country that he must have been familiar with only through comic books,
so scant was his understanding of Iraqi or indeed Arab society. However,
this did not stop the self-appointed Overlord of the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia from demanding that King Salman dismiss the Crown Prince.
Such insulting behaviour to leaders in countries outside NATO is
commonplace within the major capitals linking that always failing
alliance, but it would appear that none in Graham’s staff has any
concept of treating sovereign nations differently from the way
slaveholders treated their chattel in Senator Graham’s state before a
Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, put a stop to such barbarity. Of
course, the NATO doctrine is that none of the hundreds of thousands of
innocent civilians killed by that alliance in just the 21st century is
worth any regret or punishment on the perpetrators King Salman made an
inspired choice when he appointed the Crown Prince, given the
de-Wahabbization movement begun by the young heir to the Saudi throne.
Islam is a peaceful and progressive faith, and only such an approach can
ensure that the global Ummah develop to the full the potential that
Almighty has given it in the form of ability and intellect. For the
future success of his country, Crown Prince Mohammad’s drive for
modernisation needs to be pressed forward with greater speed rather than
torpedoed through the regime change demanded by self-appointed
colonial-minded politicians in countries whose own historical record is
in several patches less than perfect. The tone and content of Senator
Rand’s tweet shows only ignorance of the history of Saudi Arabia.
However, the comments of Senator Graham show the same contempt for Asia
which led US policymakers to seek to maintain French colonial rule in
Vietnam.

Sunday, 14 October 2018

Chidambaram wanted to help himself and his cronies to easy money by
rigging the Stock Markets. In the NSEL scam, SEBI wants to go after 300
defaulters when the top 30 have most of the money. Is SEBI action a
farce?

Saturday, 13 October 2018

The former Union
Minister is anticipating a ‘blowout’ for the BJP in the polls, and is
entertaining hopes of being called upon to follow in Manmohan Singh’s
footsteps by being nominated as PM by Sonia Gandhi.

The “insider vulture cabal” led by a former senior minister from the
UPA, is readying for the delivery of a “knockout blow” to short-term
economic prospects by 20 January 2019. Their expectation is for Prime
Minister Narendra Modi to call for Lok Sabha elections that would be
held in the third week of April 2019, and that a major economic shock
would reduce, if not eliminate altogether, the BJP’s chances in the
urban constituencies the party must win in order to return to power,
even as the leader of a coalition. Ironically, this very
politician-cum-cabal leader had been frantically seeking to join the BJP
in 2002, but was blocked from doing so by party functionaries in his
home state, who were unanimous that he would be totally unwelcome in the
saffron party. The former Union Minister is now anticipating a
“blowout” for the BJP in the 2019 polls, and is known to be entertaining
hopes of being called upon to “follow in Manmohan Singh’s footsteps” by
being nominated as Prime Minister by the Supreme Margdarshak of the
Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, who, the former minister’s acolytes claim,
wanted to see him in the Prime Minister’s chair from 2012 onwards, but
refrained out of regard for a “visibly faltering” Manmohan Singh. Such
talk is being spread these days, in order to scare and to de-motivate
officials looking into the former minister and his family’s financial
transactions, as he is known to be “exceptionally generous to those who
obey him and cruelly vindictive to those who ignore his commands and
needs”. Although The Sunday Guardian had more than once warned
of the activities of this cabal, those within the ruling establishment
who are linked to the cabal, through fiduciary and personal bonds,
dismissed such warnings as “conspiracy theories” deserving of no
attention, an explanation that seems to have been accepted by the
government, as substantive action against the insider vulture cabal
appears to be non-existent for the eight months since such warnings were
first aired in this newspaper.
Indeed, to both North Block as well as Mint Road, India is a country
where under-invoicing of exports and over-invoicing of imports is
negligible; where insider trading and manipulation of share prices
hardly takes place; where the currency remains outside the zone of fire
of international predators out to “short” an increasingly pathetic
rupee; and that economic difficulties are related to “global cues”
rather than government policies. If this “purely global” talk were true,
the question would come up as to why the economic team within
government should not all be removed, so as to lower government
expenditure, given that whatever happens does so (according to them)
because of global factors outside their control. The reality is that
domestic policy makes all the difference in India’s nearly $3 trillion
economy, for better or for worse, depending on what basket of measures
gets worked out and implemented. Recently, RBI Governor Urjit Patel
seemed wholly unconcerned about the consistently declining value of the
rupee, while other policymakers dealing with economic policy waxed
complacent about job growth. Whether voters agree with such stands will
become clear in forthcoming state and national polls. Looking at such an
attitude of “not my business” and of course, “not my fault”, it is
unsurprising that so little attention seems to have been paid by
official agencies to the systematic manner in which the Cabal is
enriching itself and promoting the job trajectories and financial
fortunes of its members at the expense of the 1.27 billion population of
India.

AND NOW ABOUT CHIDAMBARAM

The identity of the senior minister who heads the Cabal will remain
undisclosed. Looking, however, to the case of former Union Minister for
Home and Finance, Palaniappan Chidambaram as an illustration of how (out
of ignorance of the facts or complicity with the former minister)
inquiries against him have been “systematically diluted and sidetracked”
(to quote a senior official who worked closely with the former
minister) by his well-wishers in the administration. Enforcement
Directorate senior official Rajeshwar Singh is reported as falling foul
of Chidambaram during the UPA period when he stumbled on some facts
relating to the minister’s son Karti, whose record in business success
would put the young Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg to shame. Aware that
the officer was not among the many within the agencies who were admirers
of “PC” (which in this case refers not to Priyanka Chopra but to P.
Chidambaram), Rajeshwar was known to have been advised by a senior North
Block official that he should not himself interrogate PC, but leave
that disagreeable task to another official chosen for the purpose by the
senior official who rendered him such instructions. When Rajeshwar
declined to oblige, allegations against him that had been investigated
six years ago by the CBI and the CVC (and found to be without merit)
were referred for fresh inquiry by a senior official in North Block. How
the unanimous findings of absence of guilt of the multi-member CVC and
the multi-member CBI investigation team could be re-examined six years
later by a solitary official (reporting to the same official who was
responsible for the anti-Rajeshwar enquiry getting re-started) is among
the several anomalies within the Lutyens Zone, which rewards its own and
punishes its detractors with unfailing ease, no matter which politician
occupies the Prime Minister’s chamber in South Block. It was expected
that the ED’s Rajeshwar would take the hint and forget about building up
a case against Chidambaram, busy as he would be in saving himself from
prosecution by obliging those seeking to torpedo his probe. He has not;
but has found the going very tough subsequent to his refusal to oblige
those eager to get him off the Chidambaram probe. Small wonder that only
rudimentary progress has so far been made into the investigations
relating to Chidambaram and his family members, that too mostly on
issues that are peripheral to the broader interests of this enterprising
family, or that the ED has not even been able to get permission to file
a charge-sheet in key matters against Chidambaram, much less arrest the
UPA VVIP.

The good news is that the ED contains officials who believe in
working for nearly 20 hours on some days in the service of the nation.
Among such luminaries is Seemanchal Dash, who was Private Secretary to
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is acknowledged within his party as
the closest colleague of Prime Minister Modi in the Council of
Ministers. Although Dash is now Special Director in the ED (and may
become Director of that venerable institution in the fullness of time),
he spends several hours each day (usually 5p.m.-7.30p.m.) at North Block
giving his former colleagues the benefit of his expertise in finance.
Although uncharitable detractors say that such visits are intended to
give information about pending ED inquiries (including about
Chidambaram) to North Block grandees anxious about the fate of
Chidambaram, this allegation seems absurd. Dash is apparently motivated
only by love of country and not (as falsely alleged) love of PC and his
family. Hopefully, his long hours of work in both the ED as well as the
Ministry of Finance will not affect the health of an official who is on
track to head the ED in future, once the Modi government returns to
office in 2019, as expected by tens of millions who are admirers of the
Prime Minister. In the meantime, progress within the ED in cases such as
Aircel Maxis seem to be going the way of the 2G probe, where a CBI
Special Court came to the finding that the accused were free of blame.
The Enforcement Directorate, as a consequence, is earning the nickname
of “Escape Department”, given its almost non-existent record in bringing
to book VVIP perpetrators of frauds.

Whether by accident or by design, during the UPA tenure, Chidambaram
consistently saw officers trusted by him take up positions such as SEBI
Chairman, LIC Chairman, DG Investigation, Member Investigation, Joint
Secretaries in TRU and TPL and public sector bank chairmen. When he was
sworn in as Prime Minister, Narendra Modi took a very consequential
decision to give those officers who had worked closely with UPA-era
ministers (obviously also in the facilitation of deals that the BJP had
alleged were corrupt) a second chance. In the case of an officer (who
has since his retirement been given a job in a constitutional body of
enormous import) who was reported to have been involved in several land
transactions of a South Indian politician, it was said by a senior
supervisory official that “just because X was corrupt in a particular
state does not mean he will be corrupt at the Centre”. In his support
and respect for officials, the Prime Minister is going the way of
Vallabhbhai Patel, who as Home Minister ensured together with Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that the British-era colonial system of
administration continued into the post-1947 period, as indeed it does to
the present. It is another matter that such an attitude is leading to a
situation where the “insider vulture cabal” remains relatively immune
to action by the agencies, and is therefore in a condition to deliver a
knockout blow to economic prospects before the close of January 2019.
Unless officials linked to the cabal get identified and removed, the
group will continue to have the capacity to influence policies in ways
favourable to its colourable (mainly external) interests. Interestingly,
senior officials seem in the past to have gotten away even while making
juniors do their bidding in suspicious cases. For example, the chairman
of a public sector insurance company gave insurance in the UPA period
to a defunct airline based in Madurai on the basis of repeated telephone
calls from a senior official in Delhi. That insurance executive is now
in hot water, while the senior official (once in the Department of
Financial Services) who was actually responsible for the decision is
enjoying promotion upon promotion, including in the private sector.
Among other posts held by those close to the talented former Union Home
& Finance Minister, at least two major stock exchanges in India are
headed by individuals known to have been “exceptionally close” to P.
Chidambaram. Of course, such proximity should not be taken as any
evidence of wrongdoing.

PANIC CREATED BY CABAL

Returning to the senior UPA-era minister who heads the “insider
vulture cabal”, it is known within North Block that he ensured the
collection of photocopies and electronic data on a considerable list of
politicians (including in particular a Cabinet colleague) and officials.
Dossiers were prepared in key investigative departments under his
watch, which somehow found their way back to his personal cache (now
almost entirely kept abroad), with more than a few such dossiers getting
permanently removed from the files left behind in North Block. Each of
the officials and politicians figuring in such dossiers must be nervous
that their own misdemeanours would get outed in revenge by the former
minister, were he to be sent to prison. In the process, such activities
as the co-location imbroglio at NSE involving several brokers have been,
in effect, swept under the rug out of fear of the consequences of
action against the perpetrators, most of whom remain in high positions.
Hence the passion with which some senior officials are working to avoid
such accountability in several UPA-era misdeeds, including the selling
of public sector bank NPA at depressed prices to favourites, who later
resold the same at a huge profit. Interestingly, almost all such
favourites remain so in the present dispensation, which is not
surprising, given the Prime Minister’s statesmanlike 2014 decision to
trust hardcore UPA-era officers as key components of his own core group.
However, such bureaucrats may now be affecting the prospects for a
second term of Prime Minister Modi, who is facing flak from his base
over the lack of success of his government in bringing to book UPA-era
VVIP perpetrators of fraud, including in the matter of IL&FS. Of
course, in future the performance of those put in charge of this and
other damaged enterprises by North Block will come under scrutiny, given
the impossibility of keeping matters under wraps in this era of
smartphones and computer codes. In this context, LIC officials claim
that they had a workable plan to rescue IL&FS from poor decisions by
the management of that troubled entity. However, the “vulture cabal”
had its eye on several of the assets of the stricken company, and also
wanted control to go to a prominent businessman dabbling in NBFCs. They
therefore used their contacts to get the IL&FS board dismissed and a
fresh board appointed. The LIC officers believe that asset stripping
and transfer of control will soon follow. The “vulture cabal”, according
to them, had no hesitation in creating panic in the market through a
man-made crisis that could have been avoided if the LIC had its way.

Those insiders beholden to the insider vulture cabal are warning the
Prime Minister’s Office of a “market meltdown” and “economic mayhem”
that would take effect should leadership elements of this toxic band of
profiteers get sent to prison or even chargesheeted. The reverse is
actually true. Unless VVIP and VIP wrongdoers get proceeded against with
the full rigour of the law, there will be a denouement within three
months that could seriously affect the BJP’s chances for retaining power
in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Lack of action on the activities of the
cabal has resulted in the “October Meltdown” predicted by this paper.
Inaction against the cabal during the next 40 days will result in a
much more deadly “January Shock” getting delivered to the NDA
government.

By M D Nalapat

Removal of the Crown Prince from power would be a catastrophe for Saudi Arabia.

That hundreds of
thousands of innocents have died in wars launched by NATO during just
the present century is accepted as fact, as has been the rendition by
the US of several terror suspects to countries severely injurious to the
health of those sent there through such processes. However, once an
individual becomes a columnist for the Washington Post,
the DC Beltway assumes him or her to be an exemplar of liberal values,
and it reveals a gap in the planning of Al Qaeda that the organisation
did not seek to somehow get Osama bin Laden installed as a columnist for
that venerable (and it must be admitted, eminently readable) newspaper.
Had it done so, the ageing fanatic may have secured a tenured post on
the Harvard faculty as an expert on the sociopathology of violence,
rather than get his existence snuffed out by a frenetic bunch of SEALS
at Abbottabad, a location that the Al Qaeda chieftain clearly felt safe
in. The facts are that Jamal Khashoggi is (or was) a cold-blooded
Wahhabi ideologue. The followers of Abdul Wahhab inculcated a century
ago the conviction within substantial segments of the Arab population
that the Sufi Turks were infidels and therefore worthy not of respect,
but of instant annihilation. With the consolidation of power by
President Recep Erdogan, Wahhabism has replaced Sufism as the de facto
official theology of the Turkish state, a change that must have made
Khashoggi feel very much at ease in a context where his own country,
Saudi Arabia, is moving away from Wahhabism into the gentle and
compassionate creed revealed through the Prophet Muhammad more than
1,500 years ago. Prince Turki, the royal patron of the Saudi Washington
Post columnist, is known for his generous backing of groups across the
Middle East that regard the beheading of Christians and Shias as the
surest path to paradise. All such activities took place under the
approving guidance of Khashoggi, who called for retribution in Libya and
Syria to those regarded as apostates by Wahhabis (i.e. those who
sheltered rather than executed Shias and Christians). Ever since the oil
price hikes of the 1970s, the Wahhabi International has been gifted
hundreds of billions of dollars, especially by Al Sauds such as Prince
Turki. Some of that money went into the pockets of scholars, media
persons, politicians and officials in the more prominent member states
of NATO, principally the US and the UK. This extensive and well funded
network has now been activated to ensure that Crown Prince Muhammad bin
Salman (MbS) of Saudi Arabia get weakened enough to be removed from his
current job. The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, after he was spotted
entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, has become the trigger for a
frenzy of lobbying from the many who have over the years fed at the
trough of Wahhabi generosity to seek the downfall of the Saudi Crown
Prince, who is the successor to King Salman.

Khashoggi was working along with some
members of the Saudi Royal Family to oust the Crown Prince, and was
active in the dissemination of lurid information about the Crown Prince,
who is the first member of the Al Saud family to recognise the
existential danger posed to his country by Wahhabis and work to
eliminate their influence in the way General Al Sisi (another target of
the Washington Post) has carried out against the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt. The Brotherhood makes little secret of the fact that it promotes
religious supremacy, the “right” of Wahhabis to impose their control and
preferences over the rest of society in any country run by them.
Khashoggi must have seethed at, among other actions, the granting of
permission by the UAE to set up a temple in that princely union. Were
any other Post columnist to suggest that a church be set up anywhere in
the Middle East, it is certain that the DC Beltway-certified Saudi
exemplar of liberal values would have been horrified, indeed angered, at
such effrontery. His passionate views on Israel are known to intimates,
including President Erdogan, and it is a sore point with such minds
that Crown Prince Muhammad has opened the door to normal relations
between the country that hosts the holiest of Islamic sites and the tiny
sliver of territory that is the only Jewish state in the world.
Certainly the circumstances surrounding the case of the vanishing
Wahhabi seem unsavoury. If Khashoggi was done in within the consulate,
the amateurishness of the operation must be generating derisive laughter
within the Russian FSB, Israel’s Mossad or the CIA. It would have been
child’s play for a “double” with Khashoggi’s build to have ambled out of
the consulate in a few hours’ time in his clothes, thereby providing
Saudi officials with an alibi. Instead, surveillance cameras that have
never malfunctioned in years suddenly went dark. All this is indeed an
outrage, and possibly a crime. However, success for those seeking the
removal of Crown Prince Muhammad from power would be a catastrophe for
Saudi Arabia.

The only way that country with its
youthful population can face a future in which Saudi oil will earn a
smaller and smaller premium would be to develop the Kingdom as a
knowledge and innovation hub, something possible given the natural
talent of the Arab mind. The fetters placed on Saudi society by Wahhabis
need to be taken off, and this is what the Crown Prince is doing at
considerable personal risk. Jamal Khashoggi was engaged in a coup
attempt against MbS, an effort covertly funded by a few members of the
Al Saud family, who seek thereby to ensure that Wahhabism remains
all-powerful in their very consequential country. This plan has not yet
succeeded, but the hubbub around the disappearance of the Wahhabi
columnist is being fuelled to ensure that public opinion in the US and
within the EU impels politicians there to work towards the ouster of the
Crown Prince. Any reversal of the MbS-led effort now taking place
within Saudi Arabia to de-Wahhabise the country would have harmful
consequences for global security. The Crown Prince is clearly no saint,
as some of the materials about him that have been passed around by
Khashoggi demonstrate. But Muhammad bin Salman’s continuance in his
present office and an avoidance of dilution of his internal authority
are needed for success in the ongoing effort within Saudi Arabia to end
that country’s role as a prime mover in the spread of the Wahhabi
International and the numerous side-effects of such growth. The “baby”
of de-Wahhabisation should not be thrown away with the “bathwater” of
longstanding and regrettable Saudi tactics against those openly working
to overthrow a Saudi King or Crown Prince.

Friday, 12 October 2018

THE surname of this columnist is his mother’s family name, which in
turn was her mother’s, and so on for several centuries. Both in the
northeast of India as well as in parts of Kerala and Karnataka states,
select communities follow the matriarchal code. In some cases, only the
women inherit property, the men having to remain content with education,
mainly for war (in the case of the Nayar community). Of course, looking
after the children is the responsibility of the woman and not the man !
If ever a survey were to get conducted, it is likely to find that
matriarchal families have a better quality of life than those following
patriarchy. Women, after all, have far more sensitive antennae where the
family is concerned, and it is correctly said that the more a girl gets
educated, the better will she make the condition of her family. There
are still parts of India where a girl child is left without any but a
rudimentary education, on the principle (if such it could be called)
that her sole function is to be the housewife.
It is no coincidence that such places are those where poverty and poor
living conditions is most visible, while places where women are treated
as the equals of men are much more prosperous and orderly. In a truly
matriarchal culture, a “MeToo” movement would almost be non-existent,
for the reason that in such communities, the initiative for beginning
and developing a relationship with the opposite sex rests with the
female and not the male. The “MeToo” movement (in which women are outing
and shaming males who took advantage of them in ways other than by
mutual consent) has been fuelled by the crude manner in which more than a
few males have sought to inflict their company and worse on unwilling
women.
Almost by the day, women who were once intimidated and hounded by
predatory males are using social media to reveal what took place. Some
such reports may be fictitious and designed to fulfil agendas that
include vendetta, but the overwhelming majority are clearly genuine, and
even the media world has not been spared. It is a sign of the progress –
admittedly far from enough – that India has made in the
conscientization of society against the exploration of women that most
of those forced out of the closet by the revelations of their victims
have lost their jobs or are on the path to doing so. Several film heroes
have morphed in the public imagination to villains, while journalists
once noted for being social crusaders are now being described as
shameless predators. It seems clear from the torrent of revelations that
is spilling out daily that the “casting couch” ( or the demand for
physical intimacy as a condition for advancing a career) is not
restricted to Bollywood but is present in several other professions as
well, including politics and the media.
Unlike in countries such as India, where judges get chosen behind closed
doors, the US holds public hearings by the Senate in order to confirm
or reject a nominee. Brett Kavanaugh is now a Supreme Court Associate
Justice, and could well be Chief Justice of the United States some day,
should the present incumbent decide to retire after a while. He was
confronted by Christine Blasey Ford, an academic from California who
gave compelling testimony about an encounter that she is certain was
with the latest US Supreme Court justice. There is a case for making
public the names of each of the candidates being considered for high
judicial office ( to the High Courts or the Supreme Court), so that at
least some of the comments that follow will be from those aware of their
activities and record. This columnist has long favoured the publication
of the names of those being considered for judicial positions via the
internet, and for live streaming of all court proceedings. The Supreme
Court of India has taken a few steps in this direction, and outstanding
judges such as Chandrachud and Nariman (not to mention Chief Justice
Gogoi) may be expected to push the drive towards transparency further
and further.
In India, most decision, especially by the higher reaches of government,
get taken behind closed doors, with the public being informed only
after a fait accompli has been created. The involvement of civil society
at the early stages of several of such decisions would result in better
ones being taken and mistakes being avoided. Among the most damaging
for the Modi government is the way in which liquidity was allowed to dry
up because of the negligence of the Reserve Bank of India under a
fumbling,bumbling Governor who is among the numerous suboptimal choices
made by the present government in the field of Human Resources. In a
country of 1.27 billion people that has a vibrant civil society, most of
the jobs that are linked to political and bureaucratic patronage go to
former and present members of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS),
an inbred group with almost no accountability and where almost every
individual reaches the top of the salary scale, with a few leftovers
being taken by those from the Indian Police Service (IPS) and other
similar bureaucratic clubs.
It is only a matter of time before the “MeToo” storm hits the IAS, the
IPS and other cadres in the governance mechanism of the country. This
will happen once the fear of retribution abates after a large number of
revelations take place, thereby generating a public mood that will no
longer tolerate gender bigotry. In the case of Justice Kavanaugh,
President Trump may have won the battle but lost the war, as the way in
which the Republican Party walked over the feelings of tens of millions
of women will affect their performance in the polls that are due next
month. The Kavanaugh hearings created a new star in the Democratic
Party, Senator Kamala Harris, whose aggression clothed in poise has made
the California politician a hero to many. Her performance during the
debate on the Supreme Court nominee has given Senator Harris a high
probability of becoming a Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate in
the 2020 elections, just as Representative Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii is
very likely to earn that spot in the 2024 Presidential contest
In a matriarchal culture, the men ensure that it is the women who make
the initial moves towards a relationship. In particular, to use one’s
power to force attentions on unwilling females is sacrilege. It is
always a mistake to seek to establish close physical relationships with
subordinates, as such a move would constitute a misuse of power for
personal gratification. The “MeToo” phenomenon is a step towards
mainstreaming the matriarchal rather than a patriarchal culture and
mindset. This would be a welcome shift in a world where women are still
suffering discrimination and disappointment simply on account of gender.

Thursday, 11 October 2018

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization heads of government meeting will
be held this week in the Tajik capital city of Dushanbe. The meeting is
aimed to carry out the tasks set by the SCO Heads of States Meeting that
took place in June, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is attending.

Saturday, 6 October 2018

It looks like it would be more of the same brew served during 2004-2014.

Among the
problems concerning UPA I and II was that Sonia Gandhi regarded the
people of India as moving to a different beat than those in her native
Italy. During 2004-2014, with the exception of the Right to Information
Act, there was no effort by the government to replicate the freedoms
present in Italy to its citizens. The people of India continued to be
constrained by colonial-era shackles that were only added on to by such
votaries of “strong” governance as Palaniappan Chidambaram and Kapil
Sibal, both of whose associates claim that each is the personal choice
of Sonia Gandhi and her successor Rahul Gandhi for the Prime
Ministership, Lok Sabha numbers in 2019 permitting. Judging by the
deference with which these two authors of law upon law of regressive
measures are treated within 10 Janpath, it is a certainty that both will
have important roles in any coalition in which Congress plays a role,
as will other favourites such as Sushil Kumar Shinde (whose intimates
too talk of him as the favoured choice of “Madam” for the Prime
Ministership) and A.K. Antony, the lifelong pacifist who in a spirit of
historical irony became among the longest-serving Defence Ministers of
India. Placing him in that particular “hot seat” is analogous to
Bertrand Russell becoming Minister of Defence of the UK during 1939-45,
and it is scant wonder that the combined exertions of Chidambaram,
Sibal, Shinde and Antony motivated the Indian voter to bring the
Congress tally to 44 in the 2014 polls. Although Rahul Gandhi was in a
unique position to influence policy (during the UPA decade), he gave no
outward sign of opposing restrictive and socially regressive laws, such
as those that the Supreme Court has tossed out as being contrary to the
rights of a citizen in a democracy. Given the UPA-era governance links
of the core team of the Congress Party in what it heralds as a new era,
will a Rahul Gandhi in power retain the liberal instincts of his present
stint on the opposition benches, or in power again entrust the
processes of governance to those committed to a colonial view of India?
Which is that the people of India do not merit the freedoms enjoyed by
citizens in countries such as Italy, the UK or the US, but must remain
shackled to the administrative and legal constructs left behind by the
British together with the luxurious structures of the Lutyens Zone.

On the anniversary of the birth of
Mahatma Gandhi, the Congress Party in the person of its leading
office-holders went all the way to Wardha to emote about a “climate of
fear” across the nation. Their solution? To replace Narendra Modi as
Prime Minister with almost anyone else barring Amit Shah. Party chief
Rahul Gandhi should know that the roots of the fear that he talks about
are related not to Modi, but to the colonial system of governance left
behind by the British. The lowliest officials in India and the
politicians and moneybags who control them have awesome power over the
lives of citizens, such that an individual would face ruin were he or
she to run afoul of the bureaucracy. As for freedom of speech, a defence
analyst, Abhijeet Iyer-Mitra, is facing jail time for having posted on
the internet remarks about the ancient land of Kalinga that are both
tactless as well as tasteless. While such expressions of opinion are not
in good taste, they would not in more than a few other democracies
result in the denial of liberty that prison entails. Iyer-Mitra has
already been made to suffer the ignominy of having his powers of
reasoning questioned by the many who went through the offending posts,
which is surely punishment enough in a context where peer recognition
and respect is vital to future success. Instead, he will most probably
go to jail, where he will join hundreds of thousands of others who have
committed “crimes” that are defined as such only by a penal code that
was made almost two centuries ago after the 1857 revolt against foreign
rule. A Supreme Court bench once opined that a life sentence is
precisely that, a sentence which may conclude only with the death of the
individual incarcerated. Such a feature is among the more unattractive
parts of US jurisprudence, together with the death penalty, and
hopefully both will go the way of the laws against same-sex
relationships or relationships outside wedlock that were tossed into the
wastebasket of history by the Supreme Court recently. To consign an
individual to prison sans hope of release would be to extinguish any
thought or hope of redemptive behaviour. Prisons should not be such as
would degrade professional skills and personal relationships, and in
such a context, except for those prisoners with a propensity for
violence, “open jails” need to be the norm rather than the exception. It
is a tragic reality that the families of prisoners (as indeed those who
suffer from insanity or dementia) often join in paying a steep price,
through social exclusion and the blocking of career or promotion
opportunities. Rahul Gandhi recently claimed in the UK that he shed
tears when he saw photographs of the dead Velupillai Prabhakaran (the
LTTE chief). There are millions in India whose fates are far more
deserving, not simply of the tears of Rahul Gandhi, but concrete actions
to make this country more just.

Prime Minister Modi promised of
transformational change when he campaigned for the job in 2014. Once in
office, he chose UPA-era favourites to key official posts, and stocked
his ministry with those prominent in the A.B. Vajpayee regime. However,
that such was his intention became known only after Modi formed his
official and ministerial family. By retaining those active during UPA I
and UPA II overwhelmingly in his core team much before the 2019 polls,
Rahul Gandhi is giving rise to a perception that a government either led
by the Congress or with it as the major partner would be a UPA III. It
would be more of the same brew that was served to the Indian people
during 2004-2014. It is not the continuance of Modi as Prime Minister,
but the persistence of colonial-era powers and arbitrariness in
decision-making that causes fear of those governing amongst those
governed. Unless Rahul Gandhi—unlike his mother—shows that he regards
the people of India as deserving of the same basket of rights and
freedoms as Italians or Brits enjoy, and works towards that objective,
his promise of change will disappear into the ether, once in power.

Friday, 5 October 2018

THE Korean people have a civilisation that has an antiquity of
several millenia, and despite several periods of pain in their history,
have shown uncommon resilience. Although they themselves have in the
past been attacked and on occasions even temporarily conquered by China
and Japan, the Korean people have themselves remained true to their
age-old maxim of “Hongkik Ingan”. This means that each individual should
work for all rather than simply himself or herself. The Koreans share a
link and even a bloodline with another ancient civilisation, that of
India. Millenia ago, a princess from eastern India travelled to the
Korean peninsula and married into a ruling family. Both the lady and her
immense retinue remained in their new home, and in time their offspring
got acculturated with those who were the early residents of a land
longest ruled by the Choson dynasty from 1392 to 1910 AD. Every child in
both parts of the now divided country has been taught by parents and
teachers about the history of their land, and consequently possesses a
pride in nationhood that surpasses equivalent feelings in several other
nations.
In 1945, the defeat at the hands of the US of Japan (which had been
occupying the peninsula) led to the separation of north from south of
the country, the line of separation being drawn at the 38th paralell
north of the equator. North Korea (otherwise known as the Democratic
Peoples Republic of Korea DPRK) came under the control of the communist
leader Kim Il Sung, who had earlier fought with great courage against
the Japanese occupiers despite having much less weaponry and manpower
than what was then the most powerful military in Asia, and which had
defeated France, Britain and the Netherlands in conventional warfare
before being overcome by atom bombs dropped by the US Air Force on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ever the fighter, Kim Il Sung sought to unify
Korea through force, and initially succeeded before being driven back by
US forces that were nominally under UN command.
When General Douglas MacArthur reached the Yalu river, alarm bells rang
in Beijing at a hostile army at the doorstep of the Peoples Republic of
China. Despite having just finished a deadly civil war and with the new
state still in a state of disarray, Mao Zedong ordered the Peoples
Liberation Army to battle US forces. This resulted in a multitude of
casualties, as the Soviet Union avoided sending its air forces to
protect Chinese soldiers. Stalin was concerned that such direct
involvement in the Korean war may trigger a US atomic attack on his
country. Indeed,military strategists such as General Curtis LeMay of the
US Air Force favoured a nuclear strike on China to push back that
country’s forces, but President Harry S Truman turned down such advice,
of course after conventional bombing had killed more than 20% of the
population of the DPRK.
Kim Il Sung established a dynasty in North Korea,passing on the baton to
his son Kim Jong Il. After the latter’s death, his second son (Kim Jong
Un) took over as Supreme Leader in December 2011 of what had become a
true Hermit Kingdom. Through discussions with those who knew the
principal players in the DPRK, it became clear to this columnist that
the grandson of Kim Il Sung was a formidable player on the international
stage despite his youth. At that point in time, such a view was an
outlier. Most saw the DPRK’s Supreme Leader as being a reckless young
man, who was certain to crash his government on the rocks prepared by
his opponents within and outside Korea, including a sizeable number of
assassination strategies worked out between the Republic of Korea’s then
leadership and the US. Before her downfall and overly harsh punishment,
President Park Guen-hye joined Tokyo and Washington in applying
“maximum pressure” on the DPRK, at great cost in terms of human
suffering. In subsequent elections, Moon Jae-in was elected on a policy
centred on reaching out to North Korea.
Rather than rebuff such moves, Kim Jong Un welcomed then, while at the
same time taking advantage of the diplomatic opportunity offered by
President Trump, who is confident enough to brush aside advice from the
DC Beltway and has paid for such effrontery by a hysterical,almost
manic, media campaign by the Beltway to dismiss him from office.
Although Jong Un pushed forward the nuclear and missile projects of
North Korea at a speed far above that sanctioned by his father Kim Jong
Il, he made a point of appearing conciliatory once it became clear that
he had the technical means to cause Guam and Japan tens of thousands of
deaths in the event of war. The unprecedented warmth of his meetings
with South Korea’s Head of State is resulting in a situation where Seoul
may no longer sign off on a military campaign by the US and Japan to
try and destroy North Korea’s nuclear and missile arsenal. Unless the
muscular South Korean military joins in an attack on North Korea, the
brunt of the blows that will be delivered by Pyongyang will fall on
Japan.
Small wonder that Shinzo Abe (whose focus has been on the economy while
hoping that the North Korea issue would mainly be taken care of jointly
by Washington and Seoul) has discovered some virtue in Kim Jong Un, and
has asked his officials to meet with their DPRK counterparts. Given that
it was Tokyo that has been the loudest in urging the international
community to “squeeze North Korea till the pips squeak”, this is a
pragmatic reversal. The reality is that US and its allies have only two
options regarding North Korea. Either launch a fullscope military
assault on the state or enter into a “Bright Sunshine” policy designed
to incentivise Pyongyang into adopting a policy of conciliation and
cooperation rather than hostility natural in a situation where DPRK is
being squeezed by US and Japanese sanctions in an effort to get the Kim
regime to melt down. President Moon seems to have decided against any
military solution to N-Korean problem, and is wisely making moves to
ensure that two sides work together for mutual benefit.
A possible solution would be for the two sides to agree on a “One Nation
Two States” solution. This would entail the two regimes co-existing
side by side, but with vastly increased contact between them. South
Korean businesses would be free to invest north of the 38th parallel,
and gradually the two sides would increase the areas of convergence,
belonging as they do to a single Korean nation. Hopefully Washington and
Tokyo will not seek to sabotage such a process, for such a settlement
would be a way to bring peace and stability to the Korean peninsula
using a method that avoids bloodshed.

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About Prof. M. D. Nalapat

Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat (aka MD Nalapat or Monu Nalapat), holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, he writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs. Prof. Nalapat has no formal role in government, although he is said to influence policy at the highest levels. @MD_Nalapat

MD Nalapat's anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain.